parental meet and greet

getting rather nervous about the rendezvous with the parents this weekend. g doesn't even like his parents, so why should i? although, i recall in the past many friends have found my father and step-mother to be perfectly lovely, even though i would strongly disagree. many parents are better with distance i guess.

anyway, yesterday i went to the studio store and bought g's sister's kids a bunch of disney stuff. my plan is to purchase their affection. little girl got a tinkerbell barbie-type doll, and boy got a plush "invincibles" punching doll. baby got a super cute yellow dress w/ butt ruffles underneath. so sweet!!!

is it just me or is traveling becoming so much more of a pain in the ass? all these adult "responsibilities" are really cramping my style. there just seems to be so much to get in order before i skip town. i don't even have a pet, so i can't imagine what it would be like if you had kids. i mean, we leave tomorrow at 7am, and i still need to purchase orange-tinted lipgloss, a pair of denim capris and a gold clutch. what's a girl to do?

in a new fork state of mind

i was watching these shows the other night about body modification. they covered everything from tatoos, to artistic scarring to teeth filing. it was pretty cool because they always started in some remote african village where the tribal women (always the women, isn't it?) inflict excruciating pain on themselves because it has somehow become more "beautiful" to have snakes tatooed all over your face or to have all your teeth look like fangs. then the show will move somewhere like deuluth, minnesota or (in this case) snottsdale, arizona where they will highlight some social outcast who wants to have something insane done to his body because he thinks it is cool or likes horror films. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

in this particular instance, a scottsdale kid was having his tongue split. i didn't really watch the "procedure" because blood makes me want to hurl, but it didn't sound pleasant. like i mentioned above, the only reason he gave was that he thought it was "cool." ummm... okay. so you're telling me you are going to permanently split your tongue in half because your 18-year-old self THINKS (not knows) it is cool. i'm sorry, this doesn't sound like a very well thought out plan. i guess i would feel differently if you told me that you think reptiles are holy beings and you wanted to feel closer to god. but then i would realize that you are from scottsdale and, consequently, probably full of shit.

don't get me wrong... i totally understand rebellion. i had my tongue pierced when i was 18 because i thought i was being cool. 9 months later, however, i hadn't given any blow jobs and didn't really feel like my kissing had improved. furthermore, the roof of my mouth was often irritated, and i found myself EXTREMELY annoyed with people who flipped their tongue rings around in their mouth constantly. so... i took it out.

anyway, i guess what i am trying to say is that when you are 18, you are inherently stupid. you really shouldn't do anything to permanently alter your body. in fact, kind of like how now people are saying you shouldn't get married until you are at least 30, i'm going to extend that advice to body modification. don't fuck with yourself until you know who you are. sure, you like roses now... but maybe you'll end up being into orchids and then you'll be branded for life with a boring, ordinary flower on your ass.



in other news... i'm going to the big apple this weekend. i've managed to get some tickets to "movin' out" through my rehab connections (no joke!), so i'm pretty fired up about that. too bad they raised the terror alert yesterday. i'm in the process of trying to track down some xanax for the bf (he's already nervous to fly), so let me know if any of you are holding. sadly, my rehab hookups are more useful for scoring musical tickets than they are for prescription meds.

i hate you, and i hate your ass wedding!

what the hell is wrong with these people? if you don't want to enter your email address to view the site, don't fret. you aren't missing much. it's basically a self-important brag-fest about this couple's upcoming wedding. anyway, who the fuck does something like this? haven't we learned anything from star and al?

it seems to me that any couple who creates a website devoted to their wedding has doomed their marriage to failure before the "i do's" have been uttered. a definite, emphatic "NO!" according to carissa's "real life" rules of etiquette.

moon goddess carissa

i highly suggest that any men who do not wish to learn about the intricacies of female fertility and my own personal foray into natural family planning stop reading now.

for the rest of you:

after years of artificially withheld ovulations, i'm finally giving up on hormonal birth control. i was on orthotricyclen for the better part of college. i then took the generic oral contraceptive for a while (disaster!) and as of late have been relying on the nuvaring. for those of you who don't know, the nuvaring looks and feels like a hard, though pliable clear plastic hair tie. to use it, you stick it up your hooha and leave it there for 3 weeks. the nuvaring supposedly has the lowest dose of hormones of all the hormonal birth control options out there. my dr. prescribed it to me when i complained of lowered sex drive.

actually, i had been complaining of low sex drive since about 2001. somehow, everyone seemed to think it was a figment of my imagination. now, i have never been one to have a beef with the medical profession, but at 25 i can feel my resentment growing. every doctor i saw about this issue suggested to me that "other factors" were responsible for my decreasing interest in sex. look around on the internet, low sex drive is RARELY discussed as a potential side effect of hormonal birth control. HOWEVER, look on women's message boards and you will see post after post after post of women complaining that since they got on the pill, their libido has taken a nose dive. why isn't anyone paying attention to this?

i had friends, family and doctors alike tell me that i didn't want sex because i was depressed, stressed, etc. now i'm starting to think that maybe i was depressed, stressed and sexually repressed BECAUSE of the hormones. hormones are not something to fuck around with people. they are what keep us balanced. throw some synthetics in there and it is no wonder that i cry everyday at work and am not up for a roll in the hay.

anyway, i kind of decided to take things into my own hands. the only reason i even suspected i might be better off without the hormones was because during my "off" week (the week in which i remove the ring), i was feeling so much better than during my "on" weeks. i felt happier, more myself and about 100x more into the hanky panky.

so that leaves me with a major dilemma (as bridget would say). what to do to keep me baby free? condoms are no fun, so my first thought was diaphragm. i went to my dr. and got sized for one of those puppies. to my relief, my vagina wears a medium. what i didn't really process about the diaphragm is that before use, you have to fill it with about a tablespoon of spermicide. yes... a tablespoon. then you get the fun task of trying to shove this rather large slippery plastic thing into place in your hooha. holy fucking crap. i've been practicing and STILL haven't got it down. what an effing pain in the ass! THEN... it is only 85% effective. WHAT THE????

THERE'S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY!

lo and behold... there is. why the fertility awareness method isn't really general public knowledge is beyond me. i guess any woman who is trying to concieve knows about it, but i think EVERY woman should know about it. when used correctly it is 98% effective (same as condom w/ perfect use). the downfall is that it does take some effort on your part, but the plus is that it doesn't totally fuck up the natural balance of your body or ruin the spontaneity of the moment.

here's the gist of it. you take your temperature every morning before you get out of bed and the quality of your cervical fluid (the stuff that comes out of your hooha) and then record them on a chart. you can do it manually, or you can do it online at sites like this. it then tells you when you are fertile and when you are not. you don't have sex when you are fertile... and that's that!!! HOORAY! i find this so exciting. i had no idea that this existed at all.

the closest thing i ever heard was when this wiccan chick at some party told me she got her menstrual cycle to coincide with the cycle of the moon. she claimed to have done this by going outside every night and meditating on the lunar body. she also used a minimal amount of electricity in her house so as to not throw of her body's electromagnetic rhythms. all she had to do to avoid pregnancy was not having sex in the days leading up to, during and immediately after a full moon. sounded good to me.

xmas card etiquette in may

so in the shower this morning and leading into blow drying my hair, i was thinking. (actually, i guess i do a lot of thinking at that time. wonder what that's about?) anyway, i don't know how i started thinking about this... maybe it is because i only saw 1 day's worth of snow this past winter (i'll ignore the fact that said snow was largely responsible for costing me $300). who knows? so i was thinking how nice it would be to have a white christmas. i know it is may 19th and summer hasn't even really started, but i really like christmas and the cold white stuff (get your mind out of the gutter... ok, maybe you didn't think anything dirty. i'll try and get my mind out of the gutter.) maybe i like snow because i've never really lived in it and only had to shovel it once. the other time i had to move snow around i got to use one of those motorized blower thingies and thought it was pretty fun.

so then i started thinking about christmas cards and at what point in your life you start sending them. i've devised a christmas card etiquette timeline that i think should be universally practiced.

- start sending when you get married.

- start including photos upon the birth of your first child. ok... i guess not EXACTLY upon the birth. no one needs to see a crotch shot of junior crowning... although i would definitely give you props if you were ballsy/hilarious enough to do so.

- start writing those stupid "year in summary" letters when your kids reach their teenage years and start having lives of their own as a desperate attempt to prove to your friends and family that you have any fucking idea what your kids are ACTUALLY doing. note to clueless parents: julie isn't REALLY spending all her after school time in SAT prep... she's probably blowing some 19 year old jr. college pot dealer in the back of his mustang.

- stop including photos when your children start refusing to pose for the annual photo (this usually happens post-college... though you may be able to sneak in a few more years before your kids realize that the "candid" photos you are taking on thanksgiving aren't without motive.)

- stop writing those stupid "year in summary" letters when your kids get married and have to start sending cards of their own...you'd look pretty pathetic if you were writing about someone else's family.

- RETIRE!!! pass go! collect social sec...oh wait, nevermind. however, this is a good time to start including photos again. especially if you and your partner (this is a politically correct blog) travel alot. this is when you get to really brag about the fortunes you amassed during your working years and how you are blowing them on alaskan cruises and whatnot. the good news is that no one thinks you are bragging at this point because they are simply excited that their peers are alive and mobile. you can also opt to start up the stupid "year in summary" letter again. now instead of talking about your kids, you can talk about how often you see your grandchildren and what kind of blood pressure medication you are on.

- stop sending cards when your blood pressure medication starts giving you the shakes and you can no longer sign your name legibly.

UPDATE!

so... things have changed since my last post

- i'm now living with my boyfriend
- i no longer speak to aforementioned roommate (see me for details)
- my dad has been in and out of rehab
- my dog is dead
- i have a personal trainer
- i have a therapist
- i'm a year older

some things haven't changed...

- i still hate my job
- i still hate my job
- i still hate my job

so that's about it. sometimes i think about it and i realize that really my life isn't normal... that i've probably dealt with more than the average 25 year old. but then i think that maybe that isn't true. if you asked my therapist, she would probably say that is one of my many problems, minimizing my experiences. that's really interesting giving the title of this blog.

i'm so bored at work lately, that i think i'll take up blogging again. i've had a recent compulsion to share things that should probably remain private. i'm going to ponder over that for a bit. i'm considering starting a NEW blog for that specific purpose. there are a few people that have read this in the past that i'm not sure i would want to be privvy to such information... so i'm going to have to think about whether i should just bite the bullet and lay it all out on the table right here.

in favor of keeping this blog, i haven't posted in so long that no one will know this is here unless i tell them. in favor of starting a new blog, i guess it could be kind of symbolic of an overall fresh start.

what to do, what to do?